There’s a problem I’ve been trying to solve that’s been very difficult to articulate, define, or even perceive. There are two ways it manifests. The first is in the energetic overcharge I keep mentioning. The second is in my lack of more intimate engagement with the world around me. They’re two sides of the same coin, like a dam keeping the lake separate from the desert. The lake stagnates while the desert withers.
I’ve tried any number of exercises and energy manipulations, to no avail. What I return to is that any energy issue is at root an issue of character development. So the question is, where am I imbalanced on a level of character, morals, or beliefs?
For the purposes of solving this problem, the answer requires thinking of my “self” as more than the property of me, the individual. It’s a matter of understanding the process by which this “self” interacts with my environment, i.e. what keeps my qi compressed close to my body on the one hand and evacuated from its surroundings on the other.
Actually, when I look at it, this sort of division is in keeping with the pervasive division and specialization I see all around me. It exists to such a depth that few people really see it.
I’ll simplify the types of specializations that pertain to my experience into four:
- Internal
- External
- Natural, or Non-human
- Civilized, or Human
These are opposites on two different axes. Here’s my representation of the primary archetypes that have influenced my life, and where they fall on these two axes:
I like this organization. It explains some things about my life.
It explains why I had a hard time at Teaching Drum, a school for primitive skills that forced me to be external; even when focused on things that were purportedly internal, the dominance of the external was everpresent. (Note that I could find no archetype to occupy the Internal, Natural corner.)
It describes how tilted toward the bottom right corner—Internal and Civilized—I was when I was younger (i.e. in high school), and perhaps why I decided to compensate by engaging in activities of the opposite corner, martial arts and primitive skills.
And now I’m primarily engaged in activities of the External, Civilized corner—healing and business—and yet that, too, strikes me as unbalanced.
The thing is, no single archetype or dimension can capture who I really am. But in most every situation in my life, I have felt restricted to a limited range of possibilities. At Teaching Drum there was pressure to get rid of the books; there goes the Scholar part of me. When I’m hanging around in a suburb, practicing nature awareness naturally draws my attention into people’s yards, and I get cops called on me—there goes the Primitive Skills part of me. When I’m immersed in a business setting, I can’t very well slip into an experience of appreciation for the Divine Beauty of things—there goes the Mystic part of me.
This makes for a very dissociated experience of life.
Just for fun, let me associate these with the Four Elements.
This helps illustrate some of the deeper imbalances.
The Divided Self
- The Divided Self, Part 1
- The Divided Self, Part 2
Internal/ Natural: The Hermit?
That sounds like a good fit.